And Now My Watch Begins
by Min Daae
Summary: Future-fic: Arya comes home at last, to the one person she has left.


She had grown.

That was, absurdly, the first thought that Jon had when his men brought the young intruder back from a patrol. At first, he hadn't known it was her, let alone a girl. All dressed in bundled white, with her hair crusted with ice as well, cropped short and close – how could he have known her? Last that he had seen of his little sister, she had been a little girl, full of fire, but still a child.

But then she had opened her eyes and taken one look at him and smiled, and he knew her then.

"So I made it after all," she murmured, and then fell silent again, apparently unconscious.

Several of the men had tried to linger, but he'd shooed them all out before beginning to strip off the wet outer layers of her clothing. She didn't seem too cold, even for viciousness of the storm outside, but she did seem exhausted and there were lines in her face of pain.

His little sister. Where had she been? Something to ask when she awoke.

Ghost, of course, padded in moments after he'd dismissed the others, took one look at Arya on the floor, and huffed, which was the most noise he ever made. Then he nudged past Jon and lay down on her other side, his head over her outstretched arm.

That was the other thing, Jon realized. Nymeria wasn't with her. Where had Arya's direwolf gone?

She still didn't look much like a girl, he decided, after pulling off the frozen outer layers and discovering that those underneath were dry. Long and lean and slender to the point of being almost scrawny, but he could tell there was muscle there.

And she just _looked _older. He recognized it from those who had fought here on the Wall for the first time – Pyp, for example. He had looked young, but after the battle with the wildlings, he seemed to age quickly. Now he had the same steel bones as everyone still living in the Watch.

What had Arya seen?

Her hair crackled when he touched it with an open palm, though some of the ice was beginning to melt. Jon got up and started to build a fire in the hearth, breathing through his nose.

"Jon?" he heard, abruptly. "It's really you, isn't it?"

He was almost comforted by the smallness of her voice. The small quaver that only he would have noticed, because she was his little sister in a way none of his other siblings had really been, and he _knew _her. "It's really me," he said, quietly, and turned away from the hearth to look at her.

Her head was pillowed on one arm, the other still trapped under Ghost's head, and Arya didn't seem to mind. "Good," she said mildly, "Because I wouldn't want to have to kill you if you were lying."

He frowned at her, and Arya made a noise like a sigh through her nose. Her eyes closed slowly and opened again equally slowly. "I thought I would never make it here. But I needed to know if the rumors were true."

"About me? Or…"

"Well," she said, "Other rumors, too." Her eyes closed for a long time. "I ran into an old friend, though."

"What?" Jon said, confused.

"Gregor Clegane is dead," Arya said, and Jon blinked at the apparent non-sequitir. "Arya," he said, cautiously. "Are you hurt?"

"Only a little." She turned her head to the side a little and added, "Is Ghost lying on my arm?"

Jon sat down next to her and felt her forehead the way he'd seen Catelyn do to check for sickness. "Where are you hurt? You feel warm."

"I twisted my ankle," Arya said calmly, and grimaced. "It was stupid. I didn't see the rock under the snow. I should know better than that."

Jon frowned at her for a moment, then glanced at her ankle and scooted down to start taking off her shoes so he could look at it. She tried to squirm away. "Now hold on-"

"Where have you been?" Jon demanded. Arya fell abruptly silent and Jon slipped her foot out of the lightweight boots she was wearing, soaked through now. He found her ankle and probed it a little with his fingers. Arya hissed briefly, and this time managed to pull away, but not before he felt how swollen it was. "How long ago did you get this?"

Her eyes slid away from his and Jon was instantly suspicious. He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes in a manner that would have suited himself as a fourteen year old older brother more than the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

Dignity could be sacrificed when it came to little sisters who had been missing for over three years, almost four.

"Just today," Arya said, looking back at him. She looked completely honest. So maybe she was a better liar. Jon still knew better. He winced, but didn't ask again, just started to work the sock that had to be biting into her leg off of her foot with care.

"Where did you go?" he asked again.

"When did you become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch?" she fired back.

"Three years ago. You've been gone – all that time. They said you'd been married to Roose's son, but nobody in the North believed it." Arya nodded, slowly, and then seemed to realize Jon was looking at her waiting for an answer.

"No," she said, "I wasn't."

"So where were you, little sister?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Arya said, and her face was so solemn that Jon didn't laugh. He supposed that had probably not been her intention, but Arya had never been able to joke with a straight face. Not before – in the great Before where their family had been more or less together.

He grimaced, looking at her ankle when he finally got the sock off. "This looks awful," he said, softly. Arya just shrugged.

"I've had worse," she said, loftily, and Jon wondered if she was aware of the chill the words sent down his spine.

~.~

Arya had never known how to stay still. If Jon had hoped that maybe she had learned, wherever she had been, he was apparently mistaken. He had barely had the chance to bandage her ankle and go looking for someone with some training as a maester who could also keep their mouth shut before she was on her feet and hobbling about, first around the room where she had been laid, wrapped in one of his spare cloaks and not looking at all self-conscious, and then down into the citadel itself.

He had run all over looking for her before finally finding her with the ravens, staring eye to eye with one of them and not favoring her injured ankle at all.

"Arya," he said, or started to say, with exasperation.

"Yes," she said, without looking away from the ravens.

"You – shouldn't be up. On your feet, I mean. You're injured, and exhausted. You should rest."

"I couldn't," Arya said, quietly. "Not yet, anyway. I'm not tired enough. If I go to sleep like this, I'll dream, and I don't really want that."

Jon stilled, and frowned. "…why not?"

Arya sighed, and turned around. "Jon," she said, and then stopped. And shook her head slightly. "All right. I'll go lie down. You can bring me some soup. Weasel soup would be best."

"What?"

"Never mind," she said, and shot him a smile that looked wan and uncertain to his eye before padding away with, amazingly, no apparent limp. Jon stared after her, and worried. He glanced at the raven she'd been staring at, and it looked back at him for a moment before turning its head away in apparent disdain.

~.~

Jon found Arya curled up with Ghost, her hands buried in his fur and her chin on his shoulders. Her eyes were closed, but he could tell that she was awake by the way she shifted when he came into the room. More disturbing was how she shifted like she was preparing to attack. He wondered again where she had been, what she had seen.

But Arya had only ever spoken in her own time, and she would, eventually.

He just had to wait for it.

"Where's Nymeria?" Jon asked, and Arya's face didn't move, which was somehow more distressing than if it had.

"I don't know," she said, too quietly. And he could see her fingers tighten in Ghost's fur. "I am going to find her. But I wanted to come here first."

"I'm glad you did," Jon said, carefully, because he had a strange feeling that if he said the wrong thing he might frighten her away. "I missed you."

There was a long silence. Arya lifted her head, finally, and her eyes opened, and they were full of – something, but Jon couldn't read it. That worried him. "I missed you too," she said finally, whispered, like it was a secret, and perhaps, to her, it was.


End file.
